J-blog research: Joining 2.0

Nine months of experience blogging might not be long enough to make anyone wistful enough to reflect on the trials and tribulations being a blogger. But since I started this blog because of a public affairs degree project nearing its end and I wanted to make this blog a part of that project, now is the time to get reflective.

I purchased my first desktop computer in 1997. It was a “top of the line” re-built Micron and it did everything I needed it to do at the time. That meant sending email, writing cover letters for a job search and playing Solitaire. I held onto this antique until 2005 when I realized that it and the dial-up connection I’d always been too cheap to upgrade weren’t enough. There was more going on out on the Internet and my computing capacity was just not enough to enjoy what was now there and what was coming in the near future. Plus, I was heading into grad school in the fall of 2005. With my student ID in hand I purchased a discounted but new Mac laptop that summer. My new laptop had all the speed and power and portability to allow me to participate in the next stage of the Internet.

It wasn’t until the fall of 2006 that I heeded the advice of a good friend and current blogger to start my own blog. The second year of public affairs graduate work was about to begin and I was already thinking about my final degree project. I knew it would be about the media and my internship with the city of Seattle’s public wi-fi pilot program had jump-started my thinking about online media. Previously I my interests focused on traditional forms: TV, radio and print.

My interest in journalism had always been there as a consumer willingly participating in the “one-to-many” model of print journalism. Web 1.0, while greatly expanding the universe of information, was basically just an online version of print journalism. Then Web 2.0 started to take shape. Initially, I was not a fan of blogs because I believed the initial hype about them that they were just the ramblings of people with too much time on their hands.

But once I started to see the blog form appear on the websites of newspapers, namely the Seattle P-I and the Seattle Times, I started to take notice that maybe the blog was gaining more legitimacy. I was intrigued by this change in the newspapers’ philosophy. The reporters were writing in a more personal voice and welcomed public comments by readers. Given my preceding interest in media reform, I wanted to know more about this philosophy switch and talk to the journalists about their blogging experiences. The press is the “fourth estate” after all so why not apply it to the second and final year of my public affairs studies. I also felt my research would give journalism more attention than my public affairs curriculum currently gives it.

An Evans School student comes across the formal relationship between the media and public affairs only a couple of times. The first is in their first required public management course. You’re told correctly that the media should appear in any stakeholder analysis of any issue. Secondly, the issue of how you might want to think about how to relate to the media as a public servant or bureaucrat is covered in the “News Media and Public Policy” elective course. It’s an informative course and not surprisingly my favorite one in the curriculum. But it’s not enough attention for a branch of public affairs that has everything to do with the success or failure of many non-profit or government projects!

But, I digress.